3/11 Studios is my family and me - everyone helps in some way, in particular my husband, to help these paintings come to life. My family is pushing me to try to sell some of them because they are starting to pile up - and it would be better if they were hanging on someone's wall than sitting in the dark in my spare room.

As careers go, mine is awesome. By day I am a subatomic physicist, and I LOVE my job. As a hobby, oil painting provides me a creative outlet and putting the paint to the canvas is in itself, a very satisfying process. That I get to have an outlet, and create something that might make others happy, is a huge bonus.

The name of the studio has a deep meaning for me. I have suffered through 8 miscarriages. So I have 3 living children out of 11 pregnancies. There is so much emotion surrounding a miscarriage; physical pain, anger, anguish, and shame.

My lowest point was when I realized that I was feeling hate and jealousy when I saw other families with infants and young children. Eventually, with the help of several wonderful doctors, I was able to have my 3 wonderful children. As I work on this self-portrait over the years, I add layers of paint. Sometimes I am trying to erase something I want to fix. Sometimes I am adding more of what I like, or tweaking it a bit. It makes me think of the process of living - the mistakes and bad things are still there, but we can embrace them, and tweak them, and turn them into something new.

We are all a work in progress.